Robotic Ethics

The so-called 4th industrial revolution and its
economic and societal implications is no longer an academic
concern, but has become a matter for political as well as a public
debate. The Fourth
Industrial Revolution - characterised as the convergence of
robotics, AI, autonomous systems and information technology, or
cyber-physical systems - was the
focus of the World Economic Forum, at Davos, in 2016.

Notably all of these initiatives express the need for serious
consideration of the ethical and societal implications. Machine
ethics has been transformed from a niche area of concern of a few
engineers, philosophers and law academics, to an international
debate.

In this theme we are interested in both robot
ethics and ethical robots. The former is
broadly concerned with the ethical use of autonomous
systems including standards and regulation - in a nutshell
ethical governance, while the latter is concerned with how
autonomous systems can themselves be ethical, i.e. be imbued with
ethical values. Both are of critical importance. Ethical governance
is needed in order to develop standards that allow us to
transparently and robustly assure the safety of autonomous systems
and hence build public trust and confidence. Ethical autonomous
systems are needed because, inevitably, near future systems are
moral agents; consider driverless cars, or medical diagnosis
AIs, both of
which will need to make choices with ethical consequences.

Projects

In the next 20 years, we expect to see autonomous vehicles,
aircraft, robots, devices, swarms, and software, all of which will
(and must) be able to make their own decisions without human
intervention. This EPSRC funded project is concerned with building
autonomous systems that are verifiably correct. It is a joint
project with Liverpool
(lead) and Sheffield, and the BRL
contribution is to develop and build robots that can behave
ethically.